


Drinking to Forget

by Draycevixen



Series: POI fic by Draycevixen [28]
Category: Person of Interest (TV), Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Community: intoabar, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draycevixen/pseuds/Draycevixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the following Into a Bar Challenge:</p><p> </p><p>  <i>John Reese walks into a bar and meets... Luke Morales!</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Drinking to Forget

John needed a drink. Truth was, there weren’t enough drinks in Manhattan but a journey of a million beers had to start with a single glass and The Enigma was as good a place as any.

The bar was crowded, as usual, and he considered again just buying a bottle and taking it back to his apartment, before finally spotting an empty barstool down at the other end of the bar. It was better to stay given that Finch might be looking for him. 

He ruthlessly crushed that hope. Finch wouldn’t be in touch again until they had another number. 

He moved down the bar, easily navigating around a few hopefuls with keys to the club. It was flattering, given his recently bruised ego, but all he was looking for was oblivion. 

As he started to sit down on the last free barstool, the man sitting on the next one over spoke to him. 

“I’ll save us both some time, buddy. I’m not looking for company.”

“I wasn’t asking.” 

John ordered whisky as the stranger turned slowly towards him with the exaggerated care of a man already well on the way to being loaded. He was mid-thirties, 5’ 10”, well-built, dark hair, dark eyes, athletically handsome if you liked that sort of thing. 

“Sorry.” The man rubbed slowly at his temples. “Hell, I didn’t even understand what the last two of them were offering.”

Obviously a tourist. “This bar fronts a BDSM club.”

John didn’t think the man’s eyes could get any wider. 

“I just wanted a drink and this place looked good.”

“It is.” John drained his shot glass and tapped the bar for another. “Lots of people come here just to drink.” 

It was true, what people did in the backrooms was their own business, but John favored The Enigma because of the club’s reputation for discretion, leading it to make regular security sweeps for surveillance equipment. 

“Luke Morales.” The man stuck out his hand and John saw no harm in taking it. “I’m a detective, up in Westchester County.”

“John Reid, stockbroker.” 

He gestured at Morales’s empty beer glass and when he carefully nodded, John ordered two beers, one to keep his whisky company and one for Morales. John had done too much drinking alone.

“But you were army, right?” Morales was staring a little too hard at him. 

Perhaps it was a bad idea after all. 

“Relax, friend, I’m a detective, remember? It’s there in the way you scan the room.”

John relaxed. It was the sort of thing Carter would have spotted too and there were a lot of ex-soldiers who weren’t also ex-CIA and officially dead, so it wasn’t a useful way to identify him. 

“What brings you to New York?” If Morales did the talking he wouldn’t have to and could concentrate on his drinking instead.

“Got sent here to pick up a book, like some fucking errand boy.” Morales’s hand tightened on his glass.

“A book?”

“Yeah, from a store down the street, place called Compass Round.”

John recalled it had weird looking shit in the window. 

“All sorts of weird looking shit in the window. They were closed when I got there.” Morales drank half his beer in one long gulp. “City that never sleeps, my ass.” 

Morales drank the rest of it and looked over at John, who nodded. Morales tapped the bar for two more beers. 

“Called Abb— Lieutenant Mills and got told by Crane to stay and pick it up in the morning.” 

John drank the rest of his beer while waiting for the new one to be delivered. 

“Acts like he’s my boss and Abbie lets him. Abbie… We were…” Morales pulled his new beer closer. “Doesn’t matter now.”

So Morales was just another _one that got away_ story, the type that had been fuelling the alcohol industry and country  & western songs for years… John thought he might need to pace his own drinks a little more. 

“Ichabod Crane. Where the hell did he get that name, out of a Cracker Jack box?” Morales’s hand dropped to the bar from where he’d been cupping his glass. “You should see the way he dresses.” 

John was not going to think of his own well-dressed— about Finch. He wasn’t going to think about how Finch’s silk vest had felt under his fingers as he’d moved in closer… No, he wasn’t thinking about it. He finished his shot. 

“Frock coat, puffy shirt, high leather boots—”

What was Morales going on about now? 

Morales must have read the puzzlement on his face.

“ _Crane_. Dresses like one of those reenactment guys.” Morales traced intricate patterns in the water left behind on the bar by the beer glasses. “Tall, dark, British. Handsome fucker.” 

Morales’s hands, his softening voice, were a dead giveaway. So he wanted both of them, Abbie and Crane, and they were sending him to run errands, the poor bastard. 

John was signaling to order another beer for the poor bastard in question when Morales started slowly sliding sideways off his barstool. He caught him easily, holding him up as the bartender walked back over. 

“Surprised he held up this long. He’d been drinking steadily for an hour before you got here.” 

John checked Morales’s pockets under the watchful eye of the bartender, The Enigma really was a classy joint, and found a room key to the Ryan Hotel located right across the street. He threw some money on the bar to cover the tab then flashed Stills’s shield at the bartender who shrugged and moved away. He helped Morales to slowly get to his feet. 

Given his own disastrous evening, he felt like the least he could do was get Morales safely back to his hotel room. He slid Morales’s arm over his shoulder, took him firmly by the waist and guided him out of the bar on to the street outside. 

 

Inside Morales’s hotel room, John guided him to the bathroom and left him to it, before getting a bottle of water out of the hotel’s mini-bar and putting it on the bedside table. The water would probably cost almost as much as the hotel room itself but hopefully the Westchester police could afford it. 

Once Morales emerged from the bathroom, he efficiently helped him strip down to his boxers and deposited him in the bed, easily evading Morales’s half-hearted attempt to pull him down with him, done more, John felt, as a matter of form than anything else. 

 

By the time he’d rode the elevator back down and crossed the lobby, he’d managed to lose most of the small buzz he’d managed to accumulate. He looked longingly at the lobby bar, before turning up his coat collar and stepping back outside. He scanned the street as usual, only to spot familiar figures, Finch and Bear, walking slowly away. 

He bit back the urge to shout Finch’s name, perhaps he wasn’t quite as sober as he’d thought he was, and took off after them.

Bear spotted him first of course, stopping and turning to welcome him enthusiastically. With one final pat he stood up to face Finch.

He supposed it was possible that Finch might have ended up in the same part of town by total coincidence. He slipped his phone out of his pocket to double check but it was still turned on and the ear bud was still in his ear. 

“I wanted to apologize.” 

He’d never actually heard Finch blurt anything out before but he was definitely blurting. 

Finch clutched at Bear’s leash. “…For my overreaction.”

“Not necessary.” They were not going to have this conversation, absolutely not going to have it. Ever. All he wanted now was to get back to business as usual, convenient amnesia all-around. 

He started walking and Finch and Bear moved to keep up with him. 

Only… “Then why didn’t you come in to the bar, Finch?” 

Finch stopped walking and Bear sat down, looking up at both of them. 

“Bear and I arrived as you were entering the hotel with your inebriated… friend. I waited for a few minutes, but then decided I would speak to you at the library tomorrow.” 

By quick calculation, Finch must have waited outside the Ryan hotel in freezing cold weather for close to 30 minutes to have still been in range when John had come out of the hotel. Just long enough for Finch to have thought— “Nothing happened, I—” 

“It’s none of my business, Mr. Reese.”

And Finch had been clear enough on that point earlier. Yet here Finch was. 

“Morales is just a lovelorn cop down from Westchester. He’d had too much to drink so I got him back safely to his hotel room and left.” He put his hand on Finch’s arm, pleasantly surprised when he didn’t flinch away, the way he had when John had kissed him earlier. “I wasn’t just trying to scratch an itch, Finch. You should know that at least.” 

He started to turn away, stopping only because of Finch’s hand on his arm, Finch’s other hand reaching for the back of his neck to pull him down in to the kind of kiss John had had in mind earlier, deep and passionate, nothing held back. 

When Harold finally released him they were both panting a little, breath visible in the chilly night air. 

“I don’t understand, Harold.” 

“It’s really very simple, John, when a reclusive billionaire likes an ex-CIA op very, very much—”

“ _Harold._ ” His hands slid to Harold’s lower back, gently pulling him in closer, fitting them together, glad for the confirmation that he wasn’t the only one whose pants weren’t currently fitting right. 

“Earlier, you took me by surprise. I didn’t know this was even a possibility.” Harold moved to caress his face and he leaned in to it. “I’m not impulsive like you are. I needed time to think things through, to consider the ramifications.”

“And?”

“Considered and dismissed as relatively unimportant.”

“In relation to what?” 

“This.” Harold kissed him again. 

Harold’s reasoning was impeccable. 

“Hail a cab, John. It’s a long way to your apartment and I’d rather save my energy for when we get there.”

Really impeccable.


End file.
